Kaplan said, “In the head of this mathematical wizard,” Bankman-Fried weighed the cost of getting caught in his fraud against the gain of getting away without getting caught.

“He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal,” the judge said. “There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name right now is pretty much mud around the world.”

In requesting a lenient term, the fallen founder’s lawyer Marc Mukasey said prosecutors had compared him to some “truly vile defendants,” “stone cold financial assassins” who targeted innocent people.

“Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer who set out every morning to hurt people,” the lawyer said. “Really he’s an awkward math nerd. He thinks in probabilities about everything,” loves veganism and children, and has “a completely, off-the-charts, mind blowing intellect.”

“Sam has lost everything. Losing the people in your life and being publicly shamed by the entire globe — to me — seems like enough deterrence,” Mukasey later added.

The judge recommended that Bankman-Fried serve his term as close as possible to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he would be close to family and at a facility where his autism needs would be accommodated and he would not be in danger as a high-profile defendant.

“We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son,” Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara Fried and Joe Bankman, both law professors at Stanford, said in a statement after the hearing.

-------

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.